I Kill, Therefore I am

“Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet. . . .”  Thus goes the message of the IS delivered soon after the massacre it let loose on Paris.

Mourners near the Carillon café and the Petit Cambodge restaurant, two sites of terror attack in Paris. PHOTOGRAPH BY JEROME DELAY / AP

The smell of death seems to be what the IS has fallen in love with.  Andre Glucksmann, French philosopher who died on the 10^th of this month, argued in his book Dostoevsky in Manhattan that modern terrorism including Islamic terrorism is nihilist rather than religious or political.  It is a wild vengeance which is founded on an irresistible urge to annihilate the other.  It is not motivated by any noble goals.  There are no human values which guide it.  It is an impulse, impulse to kill.

The IS calls France the “capital of prostitution and obscenity.”  Apparently, the attack is a holy war against the evils that the French have embraced with shameless immorality. 

Are the people in the countries from where these terrorist-moralists come free from the same evils which they accuse others of?  Is there no prostitution, no obscenity, in those countries where the women are forced to hide their very identity behind veils?  What sights would we behold if the roofs were to blow off in a miraculous storm and the sun were to shine down into the rooms where the salah is supposed to resonate fervently?  When can we expect the Arabs to stop hunting for young and temporary brides from states like Kerala where Arabi kalyanam (Arab marriage) has become a part of the common lexicon?  What are the human values, let alone spiritual ones, that one can learn from the Islamic nations today?

France is not hypocritical.  That’s the only difference.  The French roofs don’t have to blow off and the sun doesn’t have to shine on them in the midnight.  That’s the only difference. 

No, not really.  There’s a huge difference.  The French don’t go around preaching morality to others.  They don’t go shooting platitudes from machine guns.  They are not killers motivated by blind vengeance that masquerades as religiosity.  They don’t have to kill in order to find the meaning of their existence.   They don’t ask you to do anything that you don’t want to.

They are liberal, in short.  They are the descendants of the philosopher who declared that “I think, therefore I am” and founded a whole philosophy on that premise. 

When will the world be liberated from sanctimonious murderers who peddle God through the barrels of machine guns and shrapnel of explosives?